From: DhSunanda@aol.com
Subject: (urth) Zoroastrianism?  Buddhism?
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 11:34:52 EDT

> "And the Ascian, his voice no louder than my own had been, and
> perhaps even softer, answered, 'How shall the state be most
> vigorous? It shall be most vigorous when it is without conflict.
> How shall disagreement be banished? By banishing the four causes
> of disagreement: lies, foolish talk, boastful talk, and talk
> which serves only to incite quarrels. 

Hi, I'm new too, and the archive search doesn't seem to work for me, so I 
don't know if the Buddhist side of the Ascians has been discussed before. I 
know nothing about Zoroastrianism, but the Ascian's talk struck me on first 
reading as a parody of both Communist and Buddhist texts. Leaving aside the 
Communist....

'How can a state be vigorous?' is a question asked of the Buddha (via an 
intermediary) by King Ajatasattu about the Vajjians. (Ajatasattu wants to use 
the answer to subvert the Vajjian State, and thus wage a winning war). The 
Buddha lists 48 conditions that under which a state might be expected to 
prosper and not decline.

The four causes of disagreement are a direct translation, if slight 
rearrangement, of the traditional four speech precepts ('I undertake to 
abstain from false speech, harsh speech, useless speech, slanderous speech'). 
Traditional Buddhist precepts (guidelines for ethical action) are divided 
into those for the body (physical actions), those for the speech 
(communication acts) and those for the mind (wrong views about reality).

--Sunanda.

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/